Six In The Morning Monday 20 May 2019

Huawei’s use of Android restricted by Google

Google has barred the world’s second biggest smartphone maker, Huawei, from some updates to the Android operating system, dealing a blow to the Chinese company.

New designs of Huawei smartphones are set to lose access to some Google apps.

The move comes after the Trump administration added Huawei to a list of companies that American firms cannot trade with unless they have a licence.

Google said it was “complying with the order and reviewing the implications”.

Huawei said it would continue to provide security updates and after sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products covering those have been sold or still in stock globally.

Julian Assange: Sweden files request for arrest over rape allegation

Prosecutor asks for warrant to begin process of extraditing WikiLeaks founder from UK

Reuters

Mon 20 May 2019 09.11 BST

The Swedish prosecutor heading an investigation into a rape allegation against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has filed a request with a local court for him to be detained in absentia.

If granted, the court order would be the first step in a process to have Assange extradited from Britain, where he is serving a 50-week sentence for skipping bail.

Al-Jazeera suspends two journalists over ‘Holocaust denying’ video

The Qatari broadcaster has come under fire for a controversial video about the Holocaust. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it represented “the worst kind of pernicious evil.”

Qatari broadcaster al-Jazeera on Sunday announced its decision to suspend two of its journalists “over violations of its editorial guidelines” for an Arabic-language video about the Holocaust.

“Al-Jazeera completely disowns the offensive content in question,” said Yaser Bishr, executive director of the broadcaster’s digital division. “Al-Jazeera would not tolerate such material on any of the Network’s platforms.”

Frenchman to be taken off life support in controversial right-to-die case

Doctors were due from Monday to start switching off the life support of a quadriplegic Frenchman who has been in a vegetative state for the last decade, in a case that has divided France and even his own family.

But the parents of Vincent Lambert have launched last ditch challenges to the court decision to halt the nutrition and hydration he receives in the Sebastopol Hospital in the northern French city of Reims.

The patient’s doctor, Vincent Sanchez, is due to start switching off the support systems from Monday, according to Lambert’s parents.

African samurai: The enduring legacy of a black warrior in feudal Japan

When feudal Japan’s most powerful warlord Nobunaga Oda met Yasuke, a black slave-turned-retainer, in 1581, he believed the man was a god.

Oda had never seen an African before. And like the locals in Japan’s then-capital of Kyoto, he was awed by Yasuke’s height, build and skin tone, according to Thomas Lockley, the author of “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan.”

“When Yasuke got to Kyoto (with Jesuit missionaries), there was a massive riot. People wanted to see him and be in his presence,” says Lockley, who spent nine years researching and writing the book, which was published last month.

States aren’t waiting for the Trump administration on environmental protections

More than a dozen states are moving to strengthen environmental protections to combat a range of issues from climate change to water pollution, opening a widening rift between stringent state policies and the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

In recent months, Hawaii, New York and California have moved to ban a widely used agricultural pesticide linked to neurological problems in children, even as the administration has resisted such restrictions. Michigan and New Jersey are pushing to restrict a ubiquitous class of chemical compounds that have turned up in drinking water, saying they can no longer wait for the Environmental Protection Agency to take action.

Colorado and New Mexico have adopted new policies targeting greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel drilling and limiting where these operations can take place. And more than a dozen states have adoptedpolicies that would force automakers to produce more fuel-efficient cars than required by federal standards.